How can we define the charism of the Emmanuel Community in the Church today?

Firstly, it means explicitly annoucing salvation for the whole of humanity. For the members of the Community, discovering or rediscovering God's infinite love, brings the desire to proclaim this to each of the men and women of our time, for each one of them is loved by the Father for all eternity. Announcing this Good News strengthens the heart and calls for a constant pastoral formation so as to accompany the dialogue between faith and reason.

Secondly, it means an openness to the Holy Spirit, founded in life togehter as brothers and sisters. This openness to the Spirit allows us to live a charism, carried together in different states of life: lay people, consecrated celibates, priests. This openness also supports the freedom of each member, that he or she might be fully themselves, in a gift of self with the others.

Thirdly, without doubt or exaggeration, the charismatic experience of Emmanuel gives witness to how the Church continually receives its identity from God. This is the Ecclesial expression of the Emmanuel vocation: living as brothers and sisters of Jesus, who points out the way to the Father. Walking forward as a communinty in order to respond to the universal call to holiness, allows us to receive the Church as a place of hope for a world that has lost its way.

Finally, as with any Catholic-Christian community, it means receiving from God himself a future that will encouage young people to take the distance they need to freely choose to commit themselves in a vocation to priesthood or consecrated life. It sometimes seems as if the Lord is pleased to give priestly vocations to the Church and to the world to the same degree that each Christian is faithful to their baptismal consecration.

Belonging to Emmanuel, wanting to become part of Emmanuel, means replying to a call from Jesus to bring into being and live out a new form of holiness in the Church, and to do it as a community. This holiness is rooted in the grace of adoration, compassion and evangelisation.

Our contemporaries repeatedly ask to see what it is we believe. This does not only mean "talking of Christ, but in a certain way... allowing Him to be seen" (John Paul II, Novo Millenio Ineunte no.16).

Through the intercession of Mary our Mother, we pray that the Community may remain faithful to the charism it has received, and continue to share it humbly and in communion with the whole Church.